VI.

With wild energy the men threw out of the car everything that had a

semblance of weight. Aeronauts well know the difference that a few

ounces make to safety when the gas has been exhausted from their

balloon. Professor Ariel had cast everything overboard with maniacal

celerity, and now, clad only in his undershirt and trousers, was hacking

at the trailing ladder to cut that off. The balloon had risen some fifty

or a hundred feet. It now halted irresolute. Could it recover itself and

mount? or would it lose courage and fall, dragging its passengers to a

certain death?

But far more fearful than the latter imminent danger was the sight of

the threatening sky. Not one of these imperilled people had ever seen

such whirling masses of mad, black, revengeful clouds. These centred

from all sides upon the site of the lost city. They rushed together and

formed eddies and funnels. They roared like live things. It was in one

of these smaller whirlwinds that the balloon was caught.

The massive folds of silk beat and writhed and tried to tear themselves

loose from the clutches of the elements. The four in the car clung to it

with terror, watching the mad-cap play of the wind.

"It's no use--I can't!" cried the professor with damp, white face,

throwing down his knife. "The wire is too strong. We must get to the

rigging, cut off the car, and God help us!"

The situation was indeed appalling. The ladder, for purposes of greater

stability, was made of wire woven over with manila. The sharp knife

could not cut that useless weight.

In this crisis the young lady recovered her equipoise. She began to take

off her shoes.

"It will help a little," she said. Then she began shyly to loose her

overskirt. But the whirlwind caught the car and nearly upset it. It

swirled and almost touched the ground.

"Up!" cried the professor. He caught the girl and tied her in

dexterously. Every man held himself in the ropes that bound the car to

the balloon as best he might. It was a fearful chance. The professor cut

a rope and made bowline chairs. Each sat in his noose and held on for

dear life. The professor, who never lost his coolness, worked as if he

had done this before. And indeed he had.

Swift had the presence of mind or the presence of heart to support the

young lady in this perilous moment.

Cut! cut! The car had been caught in a counter eddy, and was five

hundred feet or so in the air, but rapidly descending. Then the last

strand parted. Relieved of several hundred-weight, the balloon bounded

up. It was buffeted and whirled and tossed from cloud to cloud. The

maddened elements clutched at it. Balls of fire danced upon the ground

beneath, and darted here and there from cloud to cloud. As the professor

gave the last cut and the balloon soared aloft, there was a report as if

a thousand rounds of artillery were concentrated in one shot. There was

a dazzling streak of light. It smote the adventurers blind. It smote

them deaf. It stunned them into insensibility. Like limp corpses the

four sat as they were whirled on high, each clasping his arms

instinctively about the rope that held him.

It seemed as if death had overtaken them all and petrified them with its

touch.

"I have solved the problem." Mr. Ticks opened his eyes and gasped. "By

my faith, where are we?"

Far below were opaque blackness, storm and wind. Above, the blue,

infinite ether. The sun shone brilliantly. It warmed the balloon. It

expanded the gas. The _High Tariff_ kept rising. The stillness was a

miracle. Beneath stretched the panorama of a stricken country. The

highest peaks of the Buzzard mountains were below the balloon. The storm

raged over the lake and the lost city like a mock storm, it was so

distant and so unimportant. Now and then there was a flash of yellow

light and a distant reverberation. The storm was fearful, but it was

only a small blot upon a fair landscape when viewed from such a height.

"Yes," mused Mr. Ticks aloud, pulling his energies together. "I know now

what it all means. I know the secret of Russell's unparalleled

disaster."

As he spoke he reached out and shook the professor, then Swift; then he

touched the young lady with gentle deference. The three opened their

eyes, one after another.

"We're saved! Oh, what luck! We're saved!" cried Professor Ariel. Tears

of joy started from his eyes. "Say, mister," his devil-may-care manner

returning to him in the fulness of his ecstasy. "Say," punching Swift,

"you ain't got a chaw about you, have you?"

But Swift, lifting up his bewildered eyes, took in the glorious blue sky

and sun, then his gaze fell upon the horror from which they had

escaped. Mechanically he searched the pockets of his trousers. Out of

his pistol pocket he pulled a flask of brandy--all that survived to him

of his outfit for this ghastly journey. This he had forgotten, otherwise

it would have gone by the rail along with his pocketbook, to lighten the

car.

"Not yet," he said, pushing aside the professor's longing hand, "the

lady first!"

The brandy, the warm sun and the prospect of safety roused the girl

considerably. Possibly Swifts supporting arm hastened her recuperation.

Swift passed the bottle to Mr. Ticks, who drank, and coughed, and drank

again.

"It's St. Croix, vintage of forty-two," said Mr. Ticks, gratefully. The

professor got what he could. But Swift would not touch any. He was

experiencing a finer intoxication. His eyes met those of the girl, who

had been the unconscious cause of all their danger. She seemed to

perceive this, for she soon broke the profound silence by suggesting

with a blush:

"You needn't hold me so tight, sir. I'll try not to fall."

"Can you talk now?" asked Mr. Ticks of their lady companion.

This question deflected a possible embarrassment, but Swift, deeming it

safe to allow no risk, did not relax his hold of the girl.

"Are you a reporter?" he asked, with an unaccountable desire to keep the

conversation in his own hands. "This gentleman and myself are on the

_Daily Planet_, the other man is professor of the balloon."

"How did you know?" she answered with a first approach to a smile. "I

am, or at least I was, society reporter on the _Russell Telegraph_." The

last word started Mr. Ticks up again.

"You witnessed the destruction of Russell? Do you know that its cause is

the despair of the world? Do you know----"

"Oh, it was dreadful! dreadful! dreadful!" interrupted the girl with a

shudder. "I was out in my boat alone and saw it all!"

The lady hid her face. "I was so tired that morning I couldn't breathe.

It was oppressive. The air was over-charged so strangely. You touched an

iron post and a spark shot out and gave you a shock. I couldn't stay, so

I begged off and took my lunch and my work in my little skiff and rowed

two miles out and anchored and tried to write."

"Can you state for the _Planet_, Miss----?"

"Insula Magnet, that's my name, sir."

"Miss Magnet, can you state at what exact hour the catastrophe

occurred?"

The balloon had now come to a standstill, and floated quietly above the

lake and the doomed city. The four wriggled uncomfortably in the

improvised seats. The ropes cut them. The sun beat upon them hotly. They

were exhausted and hungry and parched.

"Can't we go down?" suggested Swift. His brain reeled at the great depth

below him. The person who lost his hold and fell would die before he

reached the earth. The first stage in the Strasburg cathedral is two

hundred and fifty feet high, and it is a terrible sight to look over its

stone balustrade. No one forgets his sensation when he leans over the

top of the Eiffel tower, a thousand feet from the asphalt pavement

below. Judge what it was to those inexperienced travellers to be over

ten thousand feet high, clinging like weather-beaten flies to these

straining ropes!

"No, I wouldn't descend yet in this calm for as many dollars as we are

feet high. We're safe enough here. Look up, man! Look up! Shut your

eyes. That's best!"

But Mr. Ticks pugnaciously returned to his question. What was a little

matter of falling ten thousand feet or so? A fact startling and valuable

was at stake and at hand.

"It was just a quarter of ten," answered Miss Magnet, in a low,

horror-stricken tone. "I was writing. Suddenly a bitter vapor enveloped

everything. There was no wind, no sun, no clouds, only this dense,

strange atmosphere. It prostrated me. There were a number of boats near

me. These were all of the new patent. They were steel. I saw great balls

of fire dance from boat to boat. Then there came from the city a light

such as I never saw before. It flashed like an enormous meteor, like an

incandescent flame. It enveloped Russell. I was scorched even where I

was by the flash. I heard a hissing sound like water on melted iron. And

then--"

"And then?" persisted Mr. Ticks in a kind of rapture.

"And then I must have fainted away. When I came to there was no city,

only masses of blackness and--and--Oh, the boats! The people! They were

all gone! Not capsized--not drowning--but gone. There were no boats.

There were no people. There wasn't even a dead body to keep me company.

I, only I, was left, living and alone upon the hissing water.... When I

was able I rowed back. The shore looked horrible and ridged, as if

molten lead had been poured into it. When I came nearer an awful heat

and a deadly odor overcame me. I had barely strength to row back and

anchor again. Then the mist settled everywhere except where I was." The

girl stopped for a moment, breathless.

"I couldn't see anything. It was hot, and then it was cold. I tried to

eat my luncheon. I tried to get some sleep. I called and called for

help. I couldn't tell night from day. I can't say whether it was four or

five days. I said five. I must have been faint a good deal. The worst

thing was being alone. I expected to die. I got pretty weak.... Then I

saw the balloon." The girl bowed the face which she could not hide, and

sobbed at her own dreadful story.

Swift was greatly moved. "Miss Magnet," he said gently, putting her head

upon his shoulder. "I think you had better rest. You are tired out. This

is different, you know. You needn't when you get safely down." The girl

gave him a grateful glance and obeyed him quietly.

"How did she escape?" soliloquized Mr. Ticks, loud enough to be

overheard.

"Oh, I don't know--don't ask me--unless it was that I was in a wooden

boat. All the rest on the lake go by storage battery and are made of

steel. Mine is the only old-fashioned boat, but I was always afraid.

Everybody laughed at me, but I did what I do at home. I cut off the legs

of a chair and fixed them in glass tumblers. I always sit in my office

on glass tumblers. My bed rests on glass tumblers, too. It's a

non-conductor, you know. I used to get shocked every day. Everybody got

shocked in Russell, but they pretended not to mind it."

"But, Miss Magnet, do you know what is the cause of Russell's fate? of

this deadly atmosphere beneath us?"

"N-no--unless--of course that can't be. I guess it's a visitation of

Providence--but I don't know for what." The girl stopped, awed at the

thoughts she had evoked.

"A visitation of Providence!" repeated Mr. Ticks, slowly. "Yes, she is

right. The sin of presumptuousness was visited upon that unhappy place."

"Do you mean to say"--Swift started up. Somehow he had forgotten

Russell, its mysterious fate, his mission, everything but the girl. He

had awaked to his duty. "Do you mean to say that the whole thing is due

to e--?"

"Hold on! Look below!" interrupted the professor.

They clung to the ropes and glued their gaze upon the sight so far

beneath them. The storm had magically cleared away. The sunlight now

pierced the whole landscape for the first time since the disaster. The

lost city, in black, shapeless ruins, lay directly beneath them.

"We will go down." The professor opened the safety-valve cautiously.

"The devil has been chased away by the storm," he said emphatically.

Indeed, the baleful vapor had gone. As they swiftly descended strange

sights met their eyes. They could still see everything microscopically

for a radius of twenty miles around. Black specks were rushing up the

stricken railroad tracks, along the roads, hurrying to the city of doom.

Linemen began to extend the wires; trackmen began laying new tracks.

Fully fifty thousand impatient men were madly plunging these twenty

miles from different points of the circumference, converging toward

Russell. The dead line had become a mysterious thing of the past. The

danger to life was over, and it became an unprecedented race to see who

would get first upon the spot.

"If this calm lasts, as I think it will, we will be on the ground two

hours ahead of the crowd."

Swift's eyes sparkled in reportorial ecstasy.

There was no time now nor inclination for words. In ten minutes the

_High Tariff_ was within a few hundred feet of the doomed city. Buzzards

followed its descent curiously.

"My kingdom for a notebook!" cried Swift, in anguish.

"Take mine," said his companion, shyly, "and my stylo, too."

Swift would have been more moved by this attention had he not been

absorbed in the sight at his feet.

"Do you mean," he turned to Mr. Ticks, "that this is all the effect of

e----?"

"Look sharp, now!" interrupted Professor Ariel. "Stand ready to be cut

down!" The Professor had manipulated the safety-valve so skilfully that

in another minute they grazed the serrated ground. They were not hurt.

One wide sweep of the professor's knife, and the _High Tariff_ freed now

from all restraint, bounded away never to be seen again.

"I am sorry, Professor Ariel," said Swift, immediately, "that

circumstances compel me to postpone my part of the contract. But, as we

are responsible for your loss, I will guarantee that the _Planet_ will

make it all right."

The professor did not answer. Absorbed, he followed the _High Tariff_ in

its capricious departure with tender interest.

When the three turned and stared about them, they stood palsied by the

terrible sight before them: a sight never permitted to mortal view

before, and we pray that such be withheld from the gaze of our poor race

henceforth forever.

The wide-awake, the proud, the busy city of Russell had vanished.

Russell in its short and meteoric career had spent hundreds of thousands

of dollars on its tall, iron, fireproof blocks, its steel grain

elevators, its gilded capitol, its granite churches, its hundred

factories, its indestructible depots. Where were they? Where was the

"busy hum of men"? Not a girder, not a column, not a trace of the

complicated iron vertebrae of this metal city was left to mourn the

grandeur of its structures. Not a corpse, not even a bone remained to

tell the tale of the death agony.

Stricken as dumb as the lower brute creation, this one poor girl, the

sole survivor of thirty thousand hopeful citizens, bereft of home, of

friends, of employment, of hope, of everything in life but this hideous

memory, uttered a low cry and sank senseless. Swift laid her gently on

the parched, cracked ground; it was yet heated as if a conflagration had

passed over the place. Where but five days ago haughty, frowning, iron

blocks of stores, of hotels and exchanges stood, there were ragged

gullies and deep fissures and jagged ravines, shining in the sunlight

with a black, streaked crust. The sight was dreary and dead and deserted

as if our travellers had been suddenly dropped upon the surface of the

moon. The ground was riven as by some prehistoric upheaval. It looked as

if subterranean springs of molten steel lava had spurted from the ground

and had melted the unhappy city in their onward path and had carried it

down in liquid solution to the lake.

Mr. Statis Ticks picked up a piece of this plutonian slag and examined

it attentively.

"I didn't know that brick would melt like this," he said. Then again:

"Here is platinum fused with iron and another substance I do not know."

In a second or two he added:

"I see no remains of glass. It must have evaporated." He then took a few

steps. "It is lucky," he said meditatively; "if we had been landed a few

more feet to the left we should have been broiled to death. A part of

this lava is still in a liquid state."